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Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » Do certain dogs have a NATURAL INCLINATION to be very good at something? Like hunting dogs/sheep dogs/dogs who serve as eyes for the blind?

Do certain dogs have a NATURAL INCLINATION to be very good at something? Like hunting dogs/sheep dogs/dogs who serve as eyes for the blind?

There are dogs who can sniff out drugs! Are they all naturally inclined to that so all you have to do is bring it out or are they are blank pages and trained for it?

Dogs can find their way home even though they're thousands of miles away. Or so the movies tells us. Dogs can sniff a piece of clothing and then track the person whose scent they get until they catch him/her.  A dog's hearing is beyond that of a human. So how did we find that out? How couldwe test them in ranges we can't hear?

Posted - February 6, 2019

Responses


  • 16240
    They do need training to be guide, sniffer, hunting or sheep dogs. They have been bred to serve humans but their innate talents need to be honed. Their keen sense of smell needs to be trained to sniff out a particular scent rather than anything the dog finds interesting. A dog will naturally chase and retrieve game, or sheep, but needs training to not eat the game and to make the sheep go where the farmer wants them to go rather than fleeing randomly. Guide dog training is much more rigorous and half the candidates fail.
    It's long been known that a dog's aural range reaches into ultrasonic, just how this was discovered is anybody's guess. Bats can hear twice the frequency a dog can. Both species tend to rely less on sight than humans do. A dog's colour perception is limited (they are not completely colour blind but there are some colours that they don't distinguish), bats are blind in daylight (permanently dilated pupils - they can see at night although not particularly well).
      February 6, 2019 5:30 AM MST
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  • 113301
    You sure know lots about this subject R. Thank you for sharing it with me(or us as the case may be). The dogs that go to war and fight alongside our troops in the military are war heroes to me. I've read that their human battlemates sometimes can adopt them when they are retired from serving their country. Oh what horrors they must seen when they served in war. I wonder if those dogs ever get PTSD? I'm gonna ask. Do YOU know?
      February 6, 2019 5:43 AM MST
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